Cancer

Cancer immunotherapy combination trials and a failure of the free market

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What happens when commercial interests do not align? Over a decade ago in 2002 when Novartis announced it was moving its global headquarters to Boston MA, it was viewed at the time that the United State’s pharmaceutical market was the most robust and attractive, and it made sense for Novartis to have a major presence … Read more

Cancer immunotherapy and a clinical trial dilemma

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There is a numbers problem, and a biomarker one as well. Annually the worldwide cancer drug market is on the order of $110 Billion, and individual immuno-oncology drugs cost the US healthcare system on the order of $100K to $150K per year. With such large financial incentives, there are currently over 900 existing clinical trials at clinicaltrials.gov … Read more

The immune system and cancer immunotherapy

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A ‘gold rush’ multi-billion dollar business, three targets, four cancer drugs, four antibody-based companion diagnostic tests, sixteen FDA approvals The human immune system is remarkable. When you think about the preponderance of death by infectious disease throughout history, the top two causes of death in 1900 was influenza and pneumonia, followed by tuberculosis, at 202 … Read more

SeraCare Precision Oncology

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Seracare precision medicine ngs control reference material seraseq mutation mix
The Seraseq Solid Tumor Mutation Mix-I (AF20), the first product from SeraCare’s Precision Medicine Group

This post is about Seracare’s new direction for Precision Medicine (in particular Precision Oncology), and the launch of a new product the Seraseq Solid Tumor Mutation Mix-I (AF20). But I’ll start first with a story from my days at Illumina.

It was ten years ago this week that I last launched a product. It was the Illumina Infinium Human-1 Genotyping BeadChip, and it took months of hard work, many core-team meetings, plenty of long days and many hallway discussions about the finest details of the product. Long days and many meetings go together: how can you get the things you commit to in a meeting ever done if you go to many meetings?

And in case anyone is wondering, yes that is the job of a Product Manager – you get to work hard and work closely with a team from across different areas of the company (research, manufacturing, quality, support, and engineering) and you get to experience many ups-and-downs, and learn things about yourself and others through this experience that you carry with you. These may be hard days, but they are good ones.

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Highlights from the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting, Philadelphia 2015 #AACR15

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The annual AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) meeting was held in Philadelphia PA from April 18-22, and being able to attend several sessions is a privilege. (Yes I’m writing this the morning of the last half-day, knowing that there’s still a full morning of sessions including the last poster session.) Over the years there … Read more

Steven Rosenberg and T-Cell Immunotherapy for Cancer

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Steven Rosenberg, NCI at a 2014 AACR Plenary Session
Steven Rosenberg, NCI at a 2014 AACR Plenary Session

As a person who worked at a melanoma research institute once upon a time (the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica California, by the way), it was a pleasure to hear Steven Rosenberg’s plenary talk at the AACR meeting in San Diego. A lot has happened since 1997.

It was in the mid-1990’s that I was working in the laboratory of Dr. David Hoon, and the Institute was one of the few groups at that time that had several groups working on tumor immunology. One of our main ‘competitors’ in the tumor immunology field (for metastatic melanoma) was Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute, which had the history of being the longest NCI Research Program Project grantees at that time (JWCI had the second-longest one).

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